1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of managing clinical testing apparatus, clinical testing system, and maintenance management apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a clinical testing apparatus such as a blood analyzer malfunctions, accurate analysis results would not be obtained. This may cause an interruption of operations in the testing facility. In this regard, several attempts to make it possible that a maintenance of a clinical testing apparatus, such as exchange of parts, maintenance, or inspection of equipment should be done before a failure occurs in the clinical testing apparatus have been proposed.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,047,142 discloses a monitoring system for detecting foretaste of abnormality in a clinical testing apparatus. In this monitoring system, a condition (predictive condition) that detecting a foretaste of abnormality is pre-stored by a host computer, and the host computer periodically acquires status data from the clinical testing apparatus. The status data include a radiation intensity of lamp, a number of uses of a syringe pump and the like. The host computer compares the pre-stored predictive condition with the received status data, and outputs a high possibility of abnormality occurring when the status data match the predictive condition.
It is useful to know about deterioration of a unit over time so that suitable maintenance and inspection can be performed on the clinical testing apparatus. For example, when a unit gradually deteriorates due to long-term use, there is a possibility of part of the unit can be repaired to eliminate the deterioration. On the other hand, since there may be suspicion of an abnormality when a unit rapidly deteriorates within a short time, there is a possibility that repairing just a part of the unit will be insufficient and that replacement of the unit may be required. The aforementioned art disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,047,142 does not address these problems.